CHENNAI: PV Sindhu squandered a four-point advantage towards the closing stages of her match against Yvonne Li of Germany to make an early exit from the Denmark Open at the SJF Bank Arena, Odense on Tuesday.
Sindhu, who was initially drawn against World No 1 An Se-young, was up against Li instead come Tuesday because of several withdrawals. Li, part of the reserves, was initially behind as Sindhu pocketed the opening game with relative ease. However, the World No 49 put up a strong fightback to capture Game 2. At 20-20, Sindhu had the chance to wrap up the contest but Li kept her calm to take the match to the decider.
After a close tussle in the initial phase of the decider, Sindhu had built a handy lead, not once but twice. At the half-way mark, the Indian had a 12-7 lead but Li reeled off six consecutive points to make it an exciting contest. At 15-15, Sindhu once again took a handy lead by taking four straight points. However, Li once again showed her fighting abilities to take six straight points to post a stunning upset. At the end of a thrilling tie that lasted 65 minutes, Li won 13-21, 25-23, 21-19.
Earlier, India men's singles specialist Lakshya Sen had also suffered a similar fate against veteran Chou Tien-chen of Chinese Taipei while Tanvi Sharma and Kidambi Srikanth had won their respective singles ties to advance to the second round.
Results have been hard to come by for Lakshya in the last six months or so and that theme continued as he lost in three games against the World No 6 Chou. He did put up a spirited fight, taking a game against his in-form rival, but that was not enough as the Indian eventually fell 18-21, 21-13, 15-21 in just over an hour in the BWF World Tour Super 750 tournament.
Youngster Tanvi, meanwhile, had to dig deep to get the better of Natsuki Nidaira of Japan. The World No 24 Indian beat Nidaira 21-17, 16-21, 21-19 in 72 minutes.
Former World No 1 Srikanth spent 46 minutes dispatching Arnaud Merkle of France to advance to the next stage of the competition. Srikanth beat the World No 54 22-20, 21-19.